The Great Saison Experiment: 8 Strains - Part 2

Part 1 Malt, Hops, Mash ....Continued

So with the malt bill and hopping already covered we can move onto the part that matters the most for Saison - Yeast. There are several yeast forward beer styles (hefeweizen, wit, all other French/Belgian beers with the exception of Biere de Garde), but Saison stands out. The malt and hops just provide a foundation (mouthfeel, background flavors) for the yeast derived flavors to build on. So for me the most important ingredient for my Saison is what yeast I use.  My next step was to hunt down the best yeasts. I did some important research and narrowed down my choices to 8. (I may do another round next month because there are more I want to try - many more)

No yeast was (directly) bought in the making of this beer

1. French Saison Wyeast 3711 - harvested from last year's French Saison - 5 gal batch
2. Saison Dupont - harvested from a 750 ml - 5 gal batch
3. Brett Drie - used yeast cake from ESBrett - 5 gal btach
4. ECY03 - 1/2 vial (birthday gift from a homebrew friend) - 1 gal batch - If anyone knows more about the actual yeasts in the blends please leave a comment.
5. ECY08 -  1/2 vial (birthday gift from a homebrew friend) - 1 gal batch -  If anyone knows more about the actual yeasts in the blends please leave a comment.
6. Lost Abbey Red Barn - harvest from a very fresh 750 ml -  1 gal batch -  hope it's the same yeast as Carnevale which is sweeping competitions this year.
7. Southampton Saison Deluxe - harvested from a 1 yr old bottle -  1 gal batch - Phil Markowski literally wrote the book on Farmhouse beers
8. Logsdon Seizon Bretta - harvested from 750 ml -  1 gal batch -  Have heard great things and enjoyed the interview over on Embrace The Funk

For all the yeast (except the Logsdon, pitched directly), I made a 4 oz - 1.030 starter which was poured directly into the bottle. Then 3 - 4 days later I added another 6 oz - 1.030 starter to the bottle. (For the 1 gal batches, that was the limit of the stepping up.) For the Saison Dupont and French Saison, I started stepping them up about 3 weeks before brew day. After the 6 oz starter, I added 32 oz - 1.030 starter to a 1 gal container and poured the entire contents of each starter bottle. Then 3 days before brew day I added an additional 32 oz - 1.030 wort to the Dupont, French Saison and old Brett Drie yeast cake. All the starters were showing nice krausens by brew day.

As for fermentation profile, I am going to keep this round simple instead of the preferred temperature ramping I normally do. All 20 gals were pitched at ~ 70F and kept in ambient closest conditions (~75F). I did not use any exterior cooling or water baths, I allowed all the beer's temperatures to free rise during fermentation. The next round of testing will experiment with higher fermentation temperatures (using heating blankets).

5 Gallon Batches (Brett Drie in corny, French Saison, Dupont)

Day 2

Day 5

 1 Gallon Batches (Lost Abbey, SoutHampton, ECY03, ECY08, Logsdon)

Day 2

Day 5

 I tried to emulate my water profile to the one listed in Farmhouse beers. Basically, the Saison water profile is low in all minerals except Sulfate and Bicarbonates. The higher sulfate level will help to enhance the dry and bitter mouthfeel. I do not pretend to be an expert, I just created a close approximation of the profile with San Diego water cut with R/O and some other salts added (see below).

Active fermentation took off for all the batches after a short lag time with the exception of the Logsdon yeast which did not have a starter, activity took about 36 hrs. The next phase of this experiment will be tasting notes, which I will try to get a panel together for.